Sunday, April 10, 2011

The goal for this blog is to fill it with pictures of my crazy doll collection. I became a fan of Mego 8 inch dolls at the age of three (that would be 1976, during the height of Mego's popularity) when I got my first Mego... the Fonz from Happy Days! Since then I have always preferred "dolls" over "action figures". The idea of miniature removable fabric outfits on a figure that has multiple points of articulation has always been more interesting to me than just a standard action figure. Around the age of nine I started making doll clothes for my Megos (Batman, Robin, Lizard and Tarzan), which introduced me to sewing and pattern making, and ultimately to my main passion of making puppets. To see some of my puppet characters please visit http://www.artellepuppets.ca/ Without question, Mego dolls played a major role in developing my creativity as a child.

The fact that doll clothing is made up of small fabric pattern pieces, that are sewn together to make a shape, has always captivated me. I always thought it was neat that someone was able to design the clothing just right, and in such a small scale, so that it would fit the doll correctly... especially as some of those pattern pieces were quite small. I also liked how the pieces of the Mego doll's body fit together so that the joints worked. Each standard 8 inch Mego has 14 points of articulation: wrists, ankles, knees, hips, waist, shoulders, elbows, and the neck. Although the Mego dolls were mass produced products that were not intended to be "art", they taught me at a very young age to admire the sculpting, patterns, creativity and ingenuity involved with doll making.